By David Booth

Originally published: June 27, 2014

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As if the Goodwood Festival of Speed wasn’t exciting enough in its own right, Aston Martin this year decided to make the historic races double as the launching pad for its new DP-100 Vision Gran Turismo concept, the first ever rear mid-engine design in the history of the storied marque. Powered by a twice-turbocharged 800 horsepower V12, the DP-100’s styling is at once futuristic and pays homage to all the great supercars of yore.

Developed in-house by the Design team at Aston Martin, led by design director Marek Reichman, DP-100 Vision Gran Turismo is a new, virtual-only GT racer that will be available for Gran Turismo 6 players to download in July 2014, following the global launch at the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

“As with the CC100 Speedster Concept, many of the design cues visible in DP-100, such as the light blade rear lamps, could also feed through into future sports cars that we’ll launch in the offline world,” said Reichman. “So the importance of this project should not be underestimated.”

Kazunori Yamauchi, the creator of Gran Turismo and President of Polyphony Digital Inc., said: “When I first came face to face with this car at the Aston Martin Headquarters in Gaydon, U.K., I was at a loss for words. There was this future Aston Martin in front of me, that was so detailed it could be released on the market pretty much as is.”

For all us old fogeys, all this talk of Gran Turismo can leave us feeling a little ambivalent. But it is worth mentioning that the “virtual” car is the modern concept prototype. Toyota’s FT-1 was initially but a GT6 project until its popularity demanded that the company make the prototype that was shown at this year’s Detroit auto show. So put those golf clubs back in the closet and grab your PlayStation controller. We need to convince Aston to produce this.